Tropes

Ex: George Orwell's Animal Farm is an allegory to the Russian Revolution.

Antanaclasis

a type of pun, repetition of a word in two different senses; one word used in contrasting, usually comic, senses

Ex: Put out the light, and then put out the light.

Anthimeria

the substitution of one part of speech for another

Ex: The thunder would not peace at my bidding.

Apostrophe

addressing an absent or dead person or inanimate object

Ex: O happy dagger! This is thy sheath, there rust, and let me die.

Auxesis

magnifying the importance of something by referring to it with a disproportionate name (a type of hyperbole)

Ex: Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

Erotema

asking the reader a rhetorical question (usually to confirm or deny a point)

Ex: Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to understand?

Hyperbole

use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphasis or heightened effect

Ex: It wasn't safe to come out of the shelter until noon the next day. when the Americans and their guards did come out, the sky was black with smoke. The sun was an angry little pinhead. Dresden was like the moon now, nothing but minerals. The stones were hot. Everybody else in the neighborhood was dead.

Irony

Litotes

deliberate use of understatement using the negative (a type of irony)

Ex: I cannot say that I think you are very generous to the ladies; for, whilst you are proclaiming peace and good-will to men, emancipating all nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over wives.

Meiosis

understatement; saying less than one means (a type of irony, opposite of hyperbole)

Ex: It isn't very serious. I have this tiny little tumor on the brain.

Metaphor

an implied comparison between two things of unlike nature that yet have something in common

Ex: Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.

Metonymy

substitution of some attribute for what is actually meant

Ex: Lend me a hand.

Onomatopoeia

use of words whose sounds echo the sense

Ex: The thunder crashed and boomed, while the rain hit the ground.

Oxymoron

the yoking of two terms that are ordinarily contradictory

Ex: The silence in the vacant house was deafening

Parable

an anecdotal narrative designed to teach a moral lesson statement or comment that conveys a meaning indirectly by the use of comparison, analogy, or the like

Ex: The Emperor's New Clothes is a parable stressing the importance of forming one's opinions, rather than putting complete faith into someone else's opinions.

Paradox

an apparent contradiction that nevertheless contains a measure of truth

Ex: All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

Paralipsis

a type of irony in which one proposed to pass over the matter, yet managed subtly to reveal the matter anyway

Ex: I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out...under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. and I'm not blaming this on President Obama. I just think it's an interesting coincidence.

Paronomasia

the use of words alike in sound but different in meaning (type of pun)

Ex: You have dancing shoes with nimble soles; I have a soul of lead.

Periphrasis

the substitution of a descriptive word or phrase for a proper name of or a proper name for a quality associated with the name

Ex: The bursts of color on James Pollock's abstract artwork would seem like random blotches of paint to the average Joe.

Personification

investing abstractions or inanimate objects with human qualities or abilities

Ex: In autumn, the wind whistles while the leaves dance.

Puns

generic names for those figures which make plays on words (a type of verbal irony)

Ex: It was not until the music changed from alto clef that the violist began having treble.

Simile

an explicit comparison between two things of unlike nature that yet have something in common

Ex: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?/Thou art more lovely and more temperate

Syllepsis

use of a word understood differently in relation to two or more other words, which it modifies or governs

Ex: Fix the problem, not the blame.

Synecdoche

a figure of speech in which a part stands for the whole

Ex: His eyes met hers and she sat there paler and whiter than anyone in the vast ocean of anxious faces about her.

Zeugma

somewhat like syllepsis, but the single word does not fit grammatically or idiomadically with one member of the pair